Threats
- Continued global warming could turn current marginal grasslands into deserts as rainfall patterns change.
- Land once incompatible with row-crop agriculture, but which provided a living to ranching families and habitat for prairie wildlife, is being converted to row crops.
- Development of urban areas is increasingly cutting into grassland habitat.
- Drought-hardy, cold-resistant, and herbicide-tolerant varieties of soybeans, wheat, and corn allow crops to expand into native grassland.
- Where only one crop is grown, pests and disease can spread easily, creating the need for potentially toxic pesticides.
- Continue education efforts on how to protect the soil and prevent soil erosion.
- Protect and restore wetlands, which are an important part of grassland ecology.
- Rotate agricultural crops to prevent the sapping of nutrients.
- Plant trees as windbreaks.
- Conduct dry season burning to obtain fresh growth and to restore calcium to the soil that builds up in the dry grasses.